


Picture My Regrets

by TwistedWonderland



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:48:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27058231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwistedWonderland/pseuds/TwistedWonderland
Summary: Julie Molina will do anything to protect her family.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 370





	Picture My Regrets

**Author's Note:**

> I had another Julie and the Phantom's idea.

Julie Molina was hyperaware of the fact she was here for a photo-op. And not even a good one, where she and the others could pretend they were performing for a worthy cause, like solving world hunger or saving the whales. No this photo-op was nothing more than a blatant opportunity to pander to the masses that Councilman Richards did in fact, care for children. That he did value the arts. That he had always loved music and the way it moved people.

He was full of shit. And Julie knew that more so then anyone else in her class.

“Ugh, can this get any more boring?” Flynn whines, cutting her eyes towards the stage. Ms. Harrison was talking to a severe looking blonde woman with a headset and a balding man with a clipboard. The blonde women was in charge of this event and the bald guy was his campaign manager. Neither one of them looked particularly friendly, but Julie would take either of them over having to deal with Councilman Richards in her space.

“I don’t know,” Julie mumbles. “Probably.”

If it were up to her, she wouldn’t be here. She’d be home, in the studio working on a new Phantom song with Luke or watching Reggie try and summon a banjo rather then his bass or helping Alex try and stand on Carlos’s too big skateboard without panicking so he could impress Willie when either one of them finally gathered the courage to ask the other out.

But she had to be here as part of her “commitment to the program.”

“You seem distracted,” Flynn observes, her eyes dancing around the room before perking up. “Wait, are the guys here?”

“No and they’re not coming.” Julie replies, her voice bitter and a touch too harsh. She winces. “Sorry. That was rude.”

“Way to bite my head off,” Flynn flips some of her braids over her shoulder. “You have been moody ever since Mrs. Harrison said we had to do this. Do you really hate community service that much?”

“What? No. Of course not.” Julie replied. “It’s just…” Julie doesn’t know what say. How do you tell your best friend the guest of honor is a raging homophobe who kicked his son out of the house and has spent the last twenty-five years pretending he doesn’t exist? It’s not an easy conversation to have. It’s not even one she’s sure she’s allowed to share.

Alex hadn’t exactly been forthcoming about his family. None of them had, which Julie was fine with. His past was his past, and it wasn’t any of her business if Alex didn’t want to share.

But she picked things up. Little touches like the way he avoided looking at the crosses scattered through the house. The way he tensed when her family said grace. The way he actively ended the conversation whenever his parents came up. It didn’t take a genius to figure out there was something painful Alex wasn’t telling her.

But it wasn’t until the polaroid—stuffed into a small hole underneath the couch Julie had found when looking for her Flynn’s missing earring—that Julie knew exactly what that was.

Alex stood between two adults, his arms outstretched and over the shoulders. The woman is dressed in pearls with a beautiful curl of hair and red lips. The main is dressed in a sharp suit and a red tie. But Alex, in the center of both of them dressed in his own suit, looks out of place. His hair isn’t done up right. His smile is plastic. His eyes bright and wide, but blank behind the iris. Wherever it was taken, Alex wasn’t enjoying it. On the back, in fading blue ben was _Michael, Marjorie, and Alexander Richards 1994._

“It was Easter,” Alex had gotten better at not scaring her, but it still happened. Occasionally. So she jumped and he recoiled and they both took a moment to relax before he kept going. “It was whole production. The entire church was celebrating.”

“You look…” Julie trailed off. Alex didn’t look bad. Not by a long shot. But it wasn’t him. He wasn’t comfortable. Or happy.

“Yeah,” Alex nods like he understands. “It was our last family thing before they kicked me out.” He spares a single look at the picture before turning away. “I don’t even know why I took it with me. I don’t like looking at it.” So he didn’t. He turned away and never asked for the photo back, even as Julie slipped it into her backpack just so it wouldn’t be in his space any more.

It wasn’t until Mrs. Harrison announced this surprise Concert for the Arts—all in caps—with special guest Councilman Richards did Julie realize with a sinking sort of clarity who’d she have to deal with on a near perfect Saturday morning.

“I’m tired,” Julie says finally. “It’s been a long day and we haven’t even performed yet.”

“Tell me about it,” Flynn eyes the stage again. “What do you think their talking about up there?”

Julie thought “how to end this concert faster” sounded a little harsh, so she said nothing. Instead, she picked up her folder and started flipping through her sheet music. Performances like this always tended to be exercises in stage presence then actual music. They always choose the easiest songs to perform, so it’s less about making good music and more about being able to make good music while people watch.

For her it was easy. Julie had never been one for stage fright. Same with Flynn. And people staring at Carrie was practically her dream come true. But for the others in the program—the ones without Trevor Wilson money or ghosts-who-pretend-to-be-holograms—it would be good practice.

Of course, most of their performances aren't broadcast on TV, so Julie could see how that might be nerve wracking for some. Apparently, Councilman Richards really wanted the district to know how into music he was after that leaked audio clip of him calling the arts “a waste of time, money, and space” threatened his upcoming election. Rumor has it, his political aspirations extended further up the executive branch, but how high was anyone’s guess. Regardless, it was obvious Richards wanted this too look good.

“Julie,” Ms. Harrison crouches beside her, starling the girl from her reverie. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

“Yeah?”

“After the performance, Councilman Richards would like to do a quick Q&A with some of our students,” she explains as a stone forms in Julie’s gut. “I’ve already asked Carrie and Wesley, and I was wondering if wouldn’t mind answering a couple of questions from him?”

Yes, she very much would mind. But Julie can glean from Ms. Harrison’s look that she was desperate.

“Yeah, sure.” Her voices cracks, but Ms. Harrison doesn’t comment. She just smiles and hands Julie a sheet of paper.

“There are the three questions he’ll ask you,” she says. “I promise, it’ll be fine.”

Julie didn’t know what to say to that, but hopes her smile doesn’t look as forced as it is.

/

“Marjorie,” Esther shouts through the door. “If you don’t open the door this instant, we will use Mel’s tank as a battering ram. Don’t you test us!”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Marjorie said, shuffling forward in her house slippers. She had thought living alone meant just that. Alone. Instead, it seemed that since she had moved into Elmwood Apartments, she had acquired at least three roommates who didn’t seem to care they had their own apartments they could get crumbs all over.

“Thank god,” Esther says, shoving her way into the apartment. “It’s a miracle we didn’t die waiting for you. I thought the youth were supposed to be spry and full of energy.”

“I wouldn’t consider myself a youth, Esther,” Marjorie said, stepping aside as Mel hoisted his oxygen tank over the threshold. There was a new sticker on it—one that read “Lick My Ass, Dick Fucks” in rainbow letters. Getting him that sticker maker for his birthday hadn’t been Marjorie’s best decision, but it had made him so happy Marjorie thought it was well worth the looks they got in public.

“You were born after the war dear,” Agnus says, pushing a plastic bag into Marjorie’s hands, the wooden beads of her necklace clicking together. Marjorie’s misshapen attempt at pottery is heavy in her hands. “You’re a youth to her.”

“Damn right she is.” Esther says, already nestling herself into her claimed spot on Marjorie’s couch.

Elmwood wasn’t a retirement community, but the complex was exclusively for those 65 and older. At a 68, Marjorie was one of the younger residences and the “baby” of her friend group. A friend group whom she had run into on moving day and declared Marjorie “absolutely had to join us at our Senior Citizen Ballroom Dance Class” at the community center only to ditch the class five minutes in and spend the rest of the hour tearing through old theater costumes and seeing how many fake plants they could get away with stealing. The answer? Seven. Eight if you count the very real cactus Agnus had accidently stolen from the front office.

“Please tell me you’re ready for bingo,” Mel says, his voice wispy and harsh. “I told Fortuna we’d be there by 4.”

“Of course, I’m ready for bingo,” Marjorie replies, locking the door behind her. It was barely 1, their usual outing to the Rainbow Underground’s weekly Drag Queen Bingo Afternoon Extravaganza another poor excuse to stop by and not hang out alone in their own apartments until then.

Marjorie’s not exactly sure when her ground floor apartment became a hub for her friends, but she wasn’t complaining. The company was always welcome.

She went to find a place to store her mug in her kitchen—she had left it at the community center for a reason, but leave it to Agnus to never leave a piece of art unattended—while Mel made himself comfortable next to her. Agnus was already in her armchair, pulling her knitting from her fringed purse. She was working on another scarf to put on her partner’s grave. Marjorie said she’d drive the four of them to their respective cemetery when it was done, make a day out of paying respects to those they lost.

“Ew, why is your ex on TV?” Esther asks. Marjorie peers through the doorway into the living room just in time to see Mike’s TV smile before it cuts to a new camera angle. Mike is dressed in a navy suit with a red tie, seated in a fold out chair next to a teenaged girl in a sparkly pink jacket and matching leggings. The text across the bottom of the screen reads: Councilman Richards discusses the Arts with High School Students.

“She’s a diva,” Mel says with the confidence only a drag queen with over fifty years’ experience can have. “I can tell.”

“She looks like a shark,” Agnus observes. “I hope she eats him.”

Marjorie leaves the mug on the kitchen counter—vowing to find a place for it later—before settling down in her usual spot at the far end of the couch, next to the candy dish of Hersey’s kisses.

It took a long time for her to see Mike without feeling like her skin had been soaked in ice water. Her therapist said it was a natural feeling, that it would pass in time.

Her friends helped, defacing bench ads and fliers with sharpies whenever they saw one. Watching Mike’s TV appearances and throwing popcorn and booing as if they were at _Rocky Horror_. It was nice. Too see the man she once thought of as indominable reduced to the butt of several jokes.

But even then, they couldn’t stop the sting in her heart whenever she sees him. Whenever she thinks about what they, what she did.

“Thank you, Carrie,” Mike says, his voice honeyed oil as Carrie gets up and walks off stage with enough attitude the Marjorie was certain if Mel could get her as a drag daughter, he would. “My last guest is sixteen-year-old Julie Molina.”

The camera pans to a dark-haired girl with a gap between her teeth. Her hands are deep in the pockets of her multicolored hoodie as she steps on stage. Based on the production value, Marjorie assumes Esther must’ve stumbled across one of those public access channels Mike loves to splash his face across. If he was smart, he’d livestream his obvious bids of public approval, but Mike was never one to accept change well.

“Hello Julie,” Mike says, the camera zooming in a bit to close on his face. “That was a wonderful performance.”

“Uh…thanks.” There’s something in her voice that makes Marjorie sit a little straighter. She had been around Mike for decades, watching him at rallies and pancake breakfasts and interact with the general public. She had learned to tell who had media training, who had no media training, who was nervous to speak to him, who was nervous to speak with him, and all sorts of other little distinctions she had picked out over the years. To most her short sentence would make her seem nervous, unsure in front of a man like Mike. But Marjorie heard it, the undertone of her voice, the harshness of the word.

Whoever Julie Molina was, it was obvious that she hated Mike Richards.

And when the camera pans to her, her whole face in frame with a flare in her nostril, the slight curl of her lip, the intensity behind her eyes, everyone else noticed too.

“Hot damn,” Esther shrieks. “I think I found myself another grandchild.”

“So, Julie.” Mike continues. If he were thrown by her behavior, he’d never show it. “How did you first get into music?”

“My mom,” she says curtly. Julie blinks for a second, then relaxes into her seat, tension bleeding from her body. “She taught me to sing and play piano when I was really young. We used to spend hours in our garage playing with old guitars and banging out nonsense on the piano. We’d write songs and perform then for my dad. She…she taught me almost everything I know.” Julie pauses to wet her lips. “She died over a year ago. And whenever I play music, I feel…not like she’s with me exactly. But that I put a little bit of her into everything I play.”

“Poor thing,” Agnus says her needles clicking together. Esther hums in agreement.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mike’s face doesn’t move, but he lets the silence go on a moment longer then he would normally, as if he were giving her space to remember rather then wait for enough time to pass to ask the next questions without being insensitive. “Do you find—"

“Actually,” Julie interrupts. “I’d like to thank you too, Councilman. Because if it wasn’t for you, I probably would’ve never gotten into music at all.”

Marjorie watches as Mike’s face melts from annoyed at being interrupted to preening at the compliment, even though she’s lost at how that could be possible. If there’s one thing Marjorie knew about her ex-husband it’s that he thought music—along with all forms of artistic expression—were a waste of time. “Really now?”

“Yeah, my mom,” Julie clears her throat, setting her shoulders back as she speaks. “She had this old demo CD she’d always play. In the car. Around the house. Everywhere. And she used that demo to teach me the basics of music. Notes, chords. I learned to keep time by listening to the drummer. It was great.” Mike moves his arm, very subtly to rest of his leg—his not so subtle way of checking the time without being obvious. “The band isn’t that famous, but you’ve probably heard of them. Sunset Curve? I believe your son Alex was their drummer.”

Marjorie feels the world shatter.

She becomes undone from reality; weightless and infinitely heavy all at once. She doesn’t know which way is up or down or anything outside of the memories that pound against her skull.

_“Get out! Get out of my house!”_

_“Is this Marjorie Richards? There’s been an accident involving your son.”_

_“How could you do that Margie? How could you?”_

“Marjorie?” Esther shouted. “Marjorie are you okay?”

No. No she wasn’t okay. But she couldn’t get the words out to say so. She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breath.

It wasn’t right to call what she had a regret. No, regret seemed too small, too minuscule, too little. No what she did was unforgivable. Disgusting. There wasn’t enough goodwill, enough karma, enough forgiveness in the world to make up for it.

It would’ve been so easy to blame Mike. To say that Mike was the aggressor, that Mike was the one in charge who dictated what should happen. That she had no choice because she was his wife. But that would be a lie. She had a made her choice.

And that choice, her choice had ruined her. Her daughter doesn’t speak to her. No calls. No texts. No forwarding addresses. Her friends had left her. Mitch could not, would not look her in the eye while Emily did nothing but; staring into her eyes as she told Marjorie exactly, exactly what she thought of her.

She wasn’t the one who forced him out of the house.

But she was the one who slammed the door.

She was the one who changed the locks.

She was the one who hung up the phone without a word.

She was the one who closed the blinds on him as he pounded against the windows, tears and snot running down his face as he begged to be let back in.

She was the one who told herself it was tough love; that he’d repent and apologize, and everything would be fine. She always assumed he’d come back, eventually. Realize he was wrong, and they could fix him together, as a family. Then he’d go on a mission trip. Marry a lovely young woman from church. Give her plenty of grandchildren like she had always wanted.

She didn’t know. She didn’t know that would be the last memory of him alive. How could she have known he’d be gone barely a month later? How could she have known?

There was no amount of volunteering at shelters, no amount of drag queen bingo or educational seminars that would ease her guilt, her pain. It was self-inflicted and Marjorie will live with that until she stands before God—and Alex—and begs their forgiveness. And if they don’t deem her worthy, then that’s something Marjorie is prepared to live with. Forever.

But she will keep doing it. Keep donating money to charities. Keep volunteering. Keep learning and supporting and marching. Because there are other people like her out there. Who disavow their kids. Who hate them. Who scorn them. And those kids deserve to know—just like Alex deserved to know—that those people don’t deserve the love they can give. That their parents are wrong. That you can—you will—find somebody that loves you just the way you are. That they will be happy. That they will be safe. That they will be heard and strong and not alone. That their family will always be the ones they choose to give love too and will always return that love, no matter what.

She hopes Alex knew that. God, she hopes he died being loved by someone.

If she can have nothing else, please God let her have that.

The movement on the TV pulls her back into reality.

It was not easy to catch Mike off guard. He had spent hours training in front of church groups and community leaders to look as put together and unbothered as possible. He wanted to appear immovable. Impregnatable. Indominable to the world.

And yet his façade had shattered, broken into sharp and jagged pieces as the blood drained from his face. Through the TV, Marjorie could see his lip tremble at the name.

“H-how?” The word is so quiet the microphone barely picks it up, but Julie speaks as if it were another question.

“I found an old photo from 1994 of you and your wife with him during an Easter celebration,” Julie says, reaching into her hoodie pocket and pulls out a polaroid. “A lot of his old stuff is still up in my studio’s loft.”

Julie words send something through her body.

She has a photo of Alex.

‘She has a photo,” Marjorie breathes. “She has a photo.”

That was what had done it for her. Mike had gotten rid of Alex’s things as soon as he could. Dumped it all into his truck and drove away in the dead of night without telling her anything. Every photo, every album, every trophy, everything was gone. Except she still had one. One of when he was young with a gap-toothed smile seated behind a tiny drum kit.

He found it beneath her pillow one day and burned it.

Then she had nothing. Nothing but guilt.

Mike seems to have forgotten he’s on TV, because his face twists into something indescribably as he lunges at the girl. His metal chair clanging against the stage, his fingers like claws reaching for the photo.

“Give me that,” he must knock against his microphone, because the feedback makes Marjorie flinch. Julie moves too, sliding like a dancer out of her seat and behind Mike.

“No,” Julie doesn’t cower. Doesn’t shrink. Instead she stares his down, her body like living marble. “You kicked him out, remember? You abandoned him. You don’t get to have him after what you did.”

“Give me that fucking photo, you bitch.” Mike was always quick to anger, but never in public. In public, he knew how important it was for people to see him as calm, as rational. He never bottled his emotions, hyperaware that one day they could explode at the wrong time and ruin everything. No, Mike was an expert at letting things go, at not dwelling on spilled coffee and overdue emails. But this…this wasn’t the public facing Mike she had watched him cultivate. This was the Mike she knew behind closed doors, who would shout and scream and demand everything from those around him and expect nothing less then complete compliance.

The feed cuts out and Marjorie feels numb.

Her friends. They knew. She couldn’t keep it from them, not when they wanted her in their group. So she told them, in her very empty new apartment decorated with seven fake plants and a very real cactus. She told them what she had done and didn’t skip a detail, because no matter how ashamed she was, she wouldn’t hide behind the past, wouldn’t sugarcoat it with things she knows now.

It didn’t matter how much she learned or how many tears she cried in Dr. Martin’s office, Alex—her Alex—died thinking that the one person who should’ve been there, who should’ve always been there, regretted having him. Regretted raising him. Regretted loving him.

And she wouldn’t soil his memory by pretending he was wrong.

She was a different person back then, but that doesn’t mean the hurt wasn’t real. That the consequences weren’t real. Her friends—God bless her friends—knew she had changed, but it wasn’t their job to forgive her. To tell her it was okay. Because it wasn’t. It was never—will never—be okay. And all Marjorie could do was own that with every fiber of her being.

She just wished she had something. Anything of his. So she could remember something that didn’t make her stomach twist and her throat burn.

“Get up,” Esther says, yanking Marjorie to her feet. “We’re going on a field trip. I’m driving.”

“Shotgun,” Mel says, as Agnus stuffs her knitting back into her purse. Neither of them looked at Marjorie as she gathered herself, wiping the tears from her eyes as she felt her nerve harden.

Julie Molina had a photo of her son. Her Alex.

And she will see him on last time if it killed her.

/

Julie had never seen a grown man look scared before.

Or at least, she had never seen a grown man looked scared of her before.

But Mike Richards clearly had been, his face gray and ashen as he seemed to realize what he had just done before bolting from the interview so fast he’d Julie was surprised he did leave behind a dust outline of himself.

Now, while the people in charge tried to hunt the councilman down, Julie had been dubbed “a straight up badass motherfucker” by the swarms of people around her.

“That was so cool,” A girl says, snapping a selfie with her. “I think you might be my hero.”

“Alright move it along,” Flynn says, shooing the girl away. “Remember people, that’s five dollars a selfie. Ten if you want her to sign something. And don’t forget to follow Julie and the Phantom’s on Instagram.”

“You’re charging people?”

“Yes, obviously,” Flynn says. “It’s called being a good businesswoman. Obviously.” She shouts at the crowd and they disperse with a few grumbles. Mrs. Harrison was no where to be seen—probably trying to smooth out whatever PR nightmare Julie had gotten the program into.

Julie wanted to say it wasn’t her fault, but it was. She hadn’t planned to say anything about Alex. But the instant she stepped on that stage, her felt something she had never felt before. Her anger—once pure in its abstract hate of Councilman Richards—turned to tar in her veins. Thick and black and bubbling and creeping through her body like oily slugs. The second she had laid eyes on him, she could see Alex. His chin. The color of his hair. The slope of his nose.

And when he smiled, two rows of brilliant white teeth that was too happy, too light to be from a man who had done what he did, Julie wanted him to break.

“Didn’t know you had those kinds of guts, Julie” Carrie had said, the second she stepped off the stage. “Good job.”

Flynn rests a heavy arm on her shoulder. “If I had known you were going to do that, I would’ve had my phone out from the start.” Then lower. “Did Alex see that?”

Julie’s face flared at the thought. Oh god, she had been so focused on Councilman Richards, she didn’t stop to think about Alex. God, she had aired his past out there for the whole world too see. Suddenly, Julie had to leave. Had to get home and apologize to Alex, beg for his forgiveness because this wasn’t her story to tell.

Julie makes it to the front yard—Flynn already lost behind her—when her name catches up with her.

“Julie Molina! We are looking for Julie Molina!”

“Please, my granddaughter Julie Molina is here somewhere. I am so clearly old, so can someone please point me in the direction of Julie Molina, my granddaughter.”

“Bitch move your ass before I run you over with my tank. Also, have you seen Julie Whatshername?”

Julie feels herself turn just in time to see an elderly woman with a cane and gray hair pulled back into a sensible bun break through the crowd. Her floral print muumuu, billowing around her like a cape as two beady eyes dart over the swarms of people before finding Julie.

“I found her. Mel, I found her! She’s over here!” Thee more people push through the ground. A old man with a ring of hair and an oxygen tank. A woman with graying locs and wooden beads around her throat. And Mrs. Richards

Julie felt her body tense on instinct as she eyed the woman. She looked like her husband. Young, but in an old sort of way. Wrinkled in some places, swollen in others. But her eyes were still bright, her body tight and coiled, her hands supplicated out in front of her.

“What do you want?” Julie didn’t growl at people, but today had been full of surprises. She half expected one of them to say something along the lines of “respect your elders, young lady,” but none of them did. Instead the man with the oxygen tank nudged Mrs. Richards in the side, pushing her forward.

“I…You have a picture.” Mrs. Richards blinks, like she isn’t quite sure of the words coming out of her mouth.

“I told your husband; you can’t have it.”

“Ex,” her words are a whisper, a breath. “Ex-husband. And I…I don’t want it.” Ms. Richards blinks. Once. Twice. Three times. “I just want to see him.”

There isn’t a word for what Julie hears in those words. Brokenness is too broad. Sorrow too poetic. Regret too simple. Instead, Julie feels every one of her defenses crumble at that voice, her body’s fight or flight instinct abandoning her as she looks at Ms. Richards who suddenly looks too fragile to even look at. The dark circles under her eyes, the hunch of her shoulders, the glassiness of her eyes. It’s too real, too much to be an act.

So, Julie pulls the picture from her pocket and holds it up like a red card in soccer. And Ms. Richards slowly approaches, each step a tremble as she inches closer.

She’s maybe a foot away from the picture before she stops, her body shaking as if she might break at any moment. But her gaze is strong and steady, and Julie can feel it through the polaroid. Feel her eyes scan every inch of the photograph so it remains burned into her skull.

Ms. Richards reaches up and Julie remembers who this is and what she said on stage. It doesn’t matter how she feels right now. She still abandoned Alex when he needed her. Just like her husband, she doesn’t get a piece of him either. So Julie shoves the picture back into her hoodie pocket before Ms. Richards could touch it. Touch him.

The sound she makes isn’t something Julie ever wants to hear again. Wet and harsh and guttural, it pulls and twists something in Julie’s chest as Ms. Richards’ face collapses into itself. Her mouth pulls into a grimace and a sob breaks out of her throat as she turns and runs back through the crowd, the two women following at her heels.

The man with the oxygen tank watches the women go until they disappear into the throng of people before turning back to Julie.

“Thank you,” he says. “She needed that.”

Julie looks at him, taking in the plethora of rainbow stickers on his oxygen take, the hot pink on his nails. But it’s his eyes that catch her. Sunken deep into the sockets, they’re so blue and so sharp and so sad that Julie knows he knows. Knows more than the audience did, more than she did. “How can you be around her?” Julie finds herself asking. “After what she did to Alex.”

He sucks in a breath—more of a gasp for air really—before sighing. It sounds like rattling bones. “I don’t expect you to understand, Julie.”

“What’s there to understand?” Julie demands. “She threw her son out of her house because he was gay.”

“She didn’t throw him out of the house,” he says, his voice too calm for the words in his mouth. “She broke him. She broke her son and there will never be a thing or person that can take that knowledge away from her. She will live with that guilt and that pain and that regret for the rest of her life and there isn’t a damn thing anyone can do to stop it.”

“Good.”

The man doesn’t scowl. Doesn’t defend Ms. Richards. Doesn’t do anything except nod his head in understanding and following his friends back into the crowd.

And Julie is alone.

/

When Julie opens the studio door, Alex is standing with his back to her. When he turns, his eyes are red and his face is tear swollen.

“Alex, I—” He cuts her off with two steps, gathering Julie in his arms and sobbing. It isn’t quiet. It isn’t soft. It’s loud and wet and it pours from his body like a thunderstorm. 

He’s so much taller than her, but Julie puts her arms around him none the less and squeezes. Squeezes so tight he’ll never forget she’s there. Never forget that she will always be there for him because that’s what family does for one another.

And as he cries, unable to form words, she hopes he knows that.

And when he squeezes back—just as tight—she knows he does.

/

Marjorie returns to her apartment alone, long after her friends had retired to their own apartments for the night; her body drained and exhausted and all she wants to do is sleep. But she moves to flick the kitchen light off instead. She must've forgotten about it in the scramble to leave and find Julie Molina. Her eyes are half closed and heavy, so she barely notices anything's wrong until she feels something slide under her foot. She looks down.

The picture is right there, face up on the floor of her kitchen, as if someone had dropped it without caring what happened next.


End file.
